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Animal Rights activism, Text vs Audio! Also more from the Invercargill Vegan Society, Steve Jobs, Stephen Fry and flashbacks from "Scarface"
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http://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/coexisting-with-nonhuman-animals/id334206335
Hello and welcome to another episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals. Today, a long awaited episode about Good, vs Evil, Audio, VS Text, "Speak Up". Well, at least I'd been looking forward to doing it.
I should start off at first with a quick plug for the Worlds Number 1 Vegan Society, where numerical stature is based on number of members. I've recently founded the Invercargill Vegan Society, IVS, its been great. So uh, what did I do to "found" this high society? Well, um, I got some "free", gouged on shipping, Business cards, and gave myself a title. The cards have a pretty purple flower in the background, a stock image, which I thought would look great with Gold and Black Chicken Friends, in my warped mine, Gold, Black and Purple are complimentary.
The cards read, "Sir Jordan W Wyatt, Invercargill Vegan Society, Founder, and "Dictator for life". I needed an impressive sounding name, hence "Sir" and an initial. Founder, yeah, well I got the thing going right? And as for "Dictator for life", as I explained on a recent blog post,
http://coexistingwithnonhumananimals.blogspot.com/2010/12/invercargill-vegan-society-business.html
I didn't want to get Steve Jobs'd, fired from a company, or in this case a Vegan Society in a small rural area known for stealing milk from forcibly knocked up mothers, by an evil board of Directors. I'm sure when we get more than one member, that my next "trying to be a bigshot like I'm from Auckland or something" move will be to create a Board, with whoever else is in. Maybe I should just keep it a Secret Society eh? That way I'm not embarrassed by our membership roll being discovered, having a single entry. Although, that DOES mean I get 100% of any money we find on the ground while doing public events, awesome!
There can be many Directors on the Board, but only one Dictator. I wont be relinquishing my post any time soon, there'll drag me out kicking and screaming, or in a bag.
Now, I do foresee a time when the Invercargill Vegan Society will have more than one actual member, and that the other two people will get sick of a Dictator who makes out like he's so hard done by, as if he's The Only Vegan in the Village.
"hey, why the hells this idiot in charge of our Vegan Society? It would be like a Hyper-pathetic-al Vegan Dot Com that promotes Veganism as difficult, that would be crazy! Lets do something about it! Off with his head! Albeit in a humane, Temple Grandin, PETA endorsed method" Yes, the Welfarists will be the death of me.
It all came to me in a vision, so there I am, after dumping my face in a pile of flour which is meant to be a billion bucks worth of illegal drug, my sister has just shot me, and I've noticed Vegans who promote Veganism are invading my palatial Florida mansion, via a bunch of tiny black and white CRT monitors. I'll be ready. The invaders will be killing my henchmen, and henchwomen too, thanks Womens Equal Right to be Mowed Down activists, I'll finish off the goons, myself, from the top of the staircase and when the guy with sun glasses, double barrel shotgun sneaks up the balcony behind me, well, I wont fall for that old trick, the oldest in the book, the sun glassed guy with double barrel shotgun who scales the balcony, sneaks up behind the Cuban drug lord and BOOM. No, see, I'll have my Republican Guard of Chicken Friends behind me, they have very sharp little eyes, not to mention their sharp little beaks. I've no doubt Assassin with Sunglasses and double barrel Shotgun will try and hurt them first, with some kind of Schwarzenegger esque one liner, "get in my belly" or "you'll be finger licking good", then I'll wheel about, and with a "I see you've said hello to my Little Friends", it'll be like the fighting in old Batman episodes,
And then I'll be SAFE to continue my reign of terror.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_%281983_film%29 )
The mighty Invercargill Vegan Society was mentioned on NZ Vegan Podcast episode 69
So I'm glad to have perhaps the southernmost Vegan Society in the world, even if it currently has ONE, count him, ONE member. Oh, I have honorary members, if you'd like to join, as a member of the Invercargill Vegan Society, currently on a mission to promote Veganism elsewhere in the world, please let me know. If you leave a comment on this blogpost……um…ok, damnit, so the point of this episode is that text methods of Vegan activism are vastly inferior in every possible way to audio methods, having an Animal Rights show…and there I go, unable to give you a pretty little link to click on. You know…we could solve that, if you'd just do everything you're told, like "leave the Invercargill Vegan Society everything in your willllllllllll……."
Ok, well I can read out the link, and you can visit it online, by typing in text, damnit. http://bit.ly/coexistivscards , if you leave a comment there, more text, then you're absolutely in, as an honorary member of the Invercargill Vegan Society. But remember, apart from like this one crucial time, blogs are really crappy, nobody needs them (except to get their RSS feed into iTunes), and audio is really cool. Got it? Good.
I hope that more Vegans will decide to have an audio show of their own. I've generally stopped calling Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals a "podcast", it sounds technical, and not everyone over the age of 30 has heard the term. Showing how over the hill they are, they often make the same idiot joke about "is that like a pea pod, is that where peas come from?". Its a little like washing your car, when some guy hollers out the window, "ya can do mine next! har har har!", you smile and tell them how very original they are! The people who make such remarks are often equally clueless about sarcasm.
So, I call this a show, as you might say a "radio show", or a "tv show". "a podcast show" sounds a little silly, or maybe we just havnt gotten used to saying it yet. A show it is, regardless of how its delivered to your ears.
I know it may seem like I'm living in the future, insisting on podcasts and digital distribution :
But other people will get more used to computers. Think about record stores, I cant even really name where you'd buy audio cds in my city. Just at the large stores, like The Warehouse, a New Zealand Wal Mart style chain. So thats it, just a couple of those stores in my city, otherwise, CDs are hard to even buy! Everything should be online now, I buy albums through iTunes, or, if not available in my country, I use Bit Torrent. I often get leaked albums, and then buy when available.
Perhaps one of the biggest things going for having a show is how others can *hear* your voice, and understand context of whats being said. You also get to hear the sheer loveliness of each others voices. Did you know that one of the 60 Minutes presenters sounds EXACTLY like Barbara DeGrande, of Veganacious? Its true! We would never have known that earth shattering truth, without Veganacious podcasts.
Here Barbara lists a few common misunderstandings, and guess which medium they come from:
Whats a tone deaf means of communication? Text!
Twitter, Facebook, Blogs. All lacking the vibrancy of podcasts!
Audio versions wouldn't be misinterpreted. Not only can you tell from my voice where I'm from, that I never went to some fancy pants Auckland University, and possibly my gender…although…I've been told my voice isn't very masculine…. you can make out far more detail than if I'd written on some scrap of paper here in Invercargill New Zealand, or, if I'd published a text blog post.
Example,
sad tone "yeah…..barbara is great…"
happy tone "yeah! barbara is great!"
As well as sounding forced, you can also tell the difference in EXPRESSION.
To see more about what is lacking from text, lets have some examples of when people record themselves reading from text. These poor souls are stuck trying to interpret the text, including words they've obviously never heard of before. Does that stop them talking? Heck no! They take a stab at it! I do this allllll the time! I'll make deliberate mistakes, and that way, when I make GENUINE errors, then I can play it off, "ohhhh, see, I hide false errors all throughout my blog and show, just to see if people notice. And you have! Thanks for playing, please award yourself several hundred internet points!"
I learnt this technique from Dan Lyons, of the Fake Steve blog,
So far its working well for me.
But a terrible case of ACTUAL errors can be found on this reading of the book Free Culture, by Larry Lessig. Volunteers recorded themselves reading a chapter, with permission by the author, the book is open, and this is the end result, terrible sound quality, mistakes throughout…its an nightmare!
Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it pronounced like "hutz pah"? I could well be wrong.
But thats nothing compared to that readers next error, this one is irritating as heck,
EDEN BURG!?!??! EDEN BURG! Are you frigging kidding me? In this day and age, an American can honestly not pronounced Edinburgh ?
Well, don't start the celebrations just yet, we'll get to book burning later. They must pay for the crime of not having phonetic spelling!
So its a great error when someone is speaking about a country, or culture they're not familiar with.
For some reason, the American guy who knows nothing of the UK spoke of "Eden Burg", while a British woman read about the Dollar, when we all know that UK uses the douche mark.
Sweet baby jesus lady, I mean, how does she say other large numbers? "hello, my name is Jordan Wyatt, I were born on the two fourth of the tenth month of one thousand nine hundred and eighty seven? A bit like saying "two thousand and ten" now, when we should be saying "twenty ten". It was "nineteen ten" before that after all, not one thousand nine hundred and ten. We got into a terrible habit from saying two thousand and one, two thousand and two…. but the rest of the century is twenty eleven, twenty twelve.
Its about time we got rid of text, we can replace it. We have the technology. We can make education better than it was. Better, Stronger, Faster….able to be stored on an iPod Touch.
Think about the different ways we "use" animals, as guide Dogs. Who would want to be dragged about by a Dog, who's subservient to you, when you could instead see for yourself? Camera sensor technology is making progress all the time, restoring sight…mostly in Animal Tests right now, as in, they deliberately blind animals, and then wire their brains up with sensors, to "restore sight", after taking it away. Its also being tried with human volunteers, and progress is continually being made. It seems to be a matter of black and white vs colour, of increasing the resolution of the sensors, and fitting it all into an artificial eyeball, to be implanted. Amazing stuff. Just like text, its crap, but it was all we had, right
I think Chris Rock is hilarious, but I had to edit the *censored* out of this clip, I've joked before about censorship in music videos being silly, when you can clearly see the artists…if you can call someone who screams obscenities an artist….when you see their mouth move, or perhaps someone has an offensive t shirt on, so it needs to be blurred…except for when the video is shown after, 9PM or so at night….
However, just the sheer amount of profanity in this clip meant I had to do SOMETHING. I think its still enjoyable, and yes, its pretty obvious to work out what was said.
I agree with Chris Rock, life sure is more difficult when you're visually impaired, using other animals as our servants is not the solution, in ethical terms, or in practical terms. No, as ALWAYS, better living through technology.
I was introduced to the idea of text writers releasing a spoken word version by Bob Cringely, not his real name, the famous tech writer, with a career spanning decades. The story was, that the computer magazines, remember those? Before they all went broke, who the hell wants to wait a whole MONTH to find out whats happening in the news?, well, they always would have a writer who was called Bob Cringely, with ghost writers working as the character. That way, they could come and go, without gaining personal fame, or demanding a raise. "but don't you know who I am, I'm….Bob Cringely…?" Yeah thats right, and there were twenty before you, so get back to work!
The real Cringely was a television host too, he decided to read his current articles aloud, and release them in podcast form. Its great, instead of having his personal website bookmarked, to be checked once a week, and often no updates, I automatically get his audio episodes in iTunes. He has a great reading voice too, who'd want to miss out on this?
Nooo Zeee land, wheres that? Hey hey hey, as an Apple fanboy, there are no reception issues with the marvelous, fantastic, MAGICAL iPhone 4! I just …cant hold it certain ways, or else sometimes my Tweets cant be sent….never happened before on my previous phones at those locations but uh….ummmm, its like, TOTALLY someone elses fault, not Apples, its….its….its in fact, yeah, its…. the Carriers who are to blame! They're trying to make Apple look bad, they're JEALOUS, thats right, JEALOUS! Yeah! I spent one thousand two hundred dollars on this thing, its perfect I tell you!
So we can all agree Robert X Cringelys columns are far nicer when read by the author, than if you could still read them in those extinct technology magazines, or onscreen. I know I certainly don't read Cringelys work, I listen to it.
Its about time we got rid of books. Just like how modern society seems inspired by 1984, crackdowns on civil liberties, getting felt up before boarding an airplane, constant wars, cameras everywhere….
its about time we took a cue from Fahrenheit 451. Heres the audiobook version, read by Author Ray Bradbury, we can tell from his voice that he's not the same man as when the book came out in 1953, he's now 90 years old.
Here the demise of books is predicted
Exactly, consumer demand got rid of the book. Take whatever you want, but not the 3D Sex Magazines!
A totally reasonable society, when books are located, the "firemen" burst in, spray the house with kerosine and burn the whole building down, cant risk the books running off only half burnt. But, theres always those crazy people who actually love books, and who'd rather burn with their Book Friends than go on living with a superior iPad, or iPod Touch. Crazy!
Books are not important, ideas are.
Something else we need to clarify, what defines quote "Animal Cruelty", yes, its "harming an animal for pleasure", I suppose, but its far more common than we seem to think:
I find it really upsetting that ANYONE would want to hurt animals, but many of my friends from School, who go out hunting absolutely love it. They've told me before about how quote "funny" it was when they shot the top of a Rabbits head off, and they saw the poor animal running off with their head quote "open".
There are many, many regular people who enjoy such things. Quote "Animal Cruelty" is not just the reported cases of pale white guys, dressed in All Black who cut themselves for fun, when not setting Dogs on fire. I promote Veganism, I'm against *all* cruelty to animals, of us using them, treating them as objects, our property, of killing them. Its all cruel.
I really want to play this next clip, I think it'll blow your mind. Its not from Fahrenheit 451. I hope to have a blog post about this up soon after this episode is released, I hope you'll retweet and share it online. The more people who hear this clip, the better.
Try and guess who the author is, this is a very, very famous book, read by a voice actor.
Was your mind blown? Adolf Hitler, more known for comparing humans to "vermin", here mentions how he liked getting up early, and feeding the Mice who lived in his building.
It really makes you think, right? Does it make you think? It made me think anyway. I don't suspect many people had heard that side to Adolf Hitler, perhaps regarded as the worst man in history. Animal Cruelty, the killing of animals, of treating them as objects is all around us, yet, a dictator who led millions of people to be killed cared for mice. Speciesism, and confusion leads us to behave in unethical ways. All animals deserve our respect, nonhuman, and human, regardless of their race, or if they like eating dry bread given to them by Hitler.
Perhaps many people still see audiobooks, podcasts and using an iPod as a hassle. Its a matter of how we are raised, of how confident we feel with different levels of technology. Books were all well and good in their time, they are technology too. I may laugh at them, but theres no way I could ever build or hell, even operate a printing press myself. Im not skilled that way. I can however download a podcast, well, ask iTunes to automatically download episodes.
Perhaps the worlds smartest man, Stephen Fry has much to say on this subject.
Its hard to argue with Stephen Fry.
Certainly, the "artificial" digital technology such as text, audio or video files is just as "real" as reading from a book. Bladerunner showed us that a superhuman supposedly "artificial" beings have just as many emotions as the whiniest Emo kid, I've always been moved by this scene:
Hold on Mr Android, cant you just backup your memory files?
Not everyone shares my jihad against the printed word however. Damn "moderates". We need a rally to reinstate insanity. These "reasonable" people can see the problems arising from text, and yet remain calm.
See, there she goes being "reasonable". Thank you very much for your help Barbara.
You can find Barbara at www.veganacious.com , now for the beauty of spelling out something aloud, vegan a c i o u s .com
Lets be clear, I usually have no idea what I'm doing when I record these episodes. I think my point with this episode would be to pester your favourite Blogs to also release Spoken Word editions of their posts, so we can know more about the author, and really experience thoughts and ideas the way they were meant to be appreciated, well, the way we've evolved to experience them best. Through speaking. Through talking. Through singing.
Those well known bloggers who've decided to have a show tend to thrive, they've long been held back by The Man and his printed word:
Theres never been a text based society, who never spoke, but instead solely used text. Well, maybe those damn kids, who wont keep off my lawn, perhaps they will be the first txt message based society.
Think about the lack of expression from Text, how its just….there….. if anything is "artificial", its ink markings on dead tree material.
All the tone, the volume, the urgency is lost. How do we show emotion by text? By using all caps? Or by making facial expressions through dashes, brackets and colons? Colon, isn't that where you poop from? Paper, isn't that what we wipe our bottoms with?
Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.
You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, or on Twitter, twitter.com/ j a y w o n t d a r t, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you for listening.
Sources
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Batman Fight Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8C9flp4oA
"we can replace them…"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Million_Dollar_Man#Opening_sequence
Using animals, Guide Dogs etc
sniffer dogs vs sensors, replacement time
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/11/12/electronic-explosive-detecting-sensor-out-sniffs-sniffer-dogs/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/artifical-retina-reconstructs-normal-vision-in-mice-human-trial/
blind seeing, no more blind dogs
http://gizmodo.com/5680086/electronic-implant-allows-the-blind-to-see
http://unpopularveganessays.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-advocacy-media-preferences.html
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